Evidentiary Bias
Amnesty’s citation of official Israeli sources produces skewed results that validate Israeli propaganda at Hamas’s expense. In some instances more credible contrary evidence is simply ignored. In its hyperbolic inventory of Hamas’s arsenal, Amnesty quotes the Israeli allegation that it intercepted a vessel carrying Iranian rockets “bound for Gaza.” It omits the widely reported finding of a UN expert panel that the weapons were bound not for Gaza but Sudan. Amnesty also repeats the official Israeli claim that the ground invasion was launched to “destroy the tunnel system…, particularly those with shafts discovered near residential areas located in Israel,” and that Israeli troops repeatedly preempted Hamas infiltrators from targeting civilian communities. It ignores compelling evidence, including statements by a senior Israeli army source and an Israeli military analyst, that Hamas fighters exiting the tunnels targeted Israeli soldiers, not civilians. According to 2014 Gaza Conflict, the tunnels exited “in or close to residential communities,” yet every instance of Hamas infiltration climaxed, not in a headlong assault on civilians but, instead, an armed engagement with Israeli combatants.
Amnesty’s use of official Israeli sources becomes particularly problematic when the net effect is to magnify Hamas’s and diminish Israel’s criminal culpability. This distortion partly results from another of Amnesty’s strategic “balancing” acts. Israel barred Amnesty (and other human rights organizations) from entering Gaza after OPE. Amnesty “consequently had to carry out research in the Gaza Strip remotely, supported by two fieldworkers based in Gaza.” As a practical matter, this Israeli-imposed constraint prevented Amnesty in multiple instances from checking the veracity of official Israeli exculpations. How did Amnesty resolve this forensic challenge? It typically reports the allegation of an Israeli war crime, then the Israeli denial, and then “neutrally” proceeds to call for a proper on-the-ground investigation—which, as Amnesty knows full well, Israel will never permit. The reader is thus left in perfect and permanent limbo as to where truth lies. When assessing allegations that Hamas violated international law during OPE, Amnesty treats incriminating prior conduct by Hamas as corroborative evidence. Shouldn’t Amnesty have also contextualized Israeli denials of culpability with the caveat that in the past these denials consistently proved on inspection to be flagrant lies? Indeed, the UN Board of Inquiry investigation of Israeli attacks on UN facilities during OPE repeatedly put the lie to Israel’s pleas of innocence. Amnesty’s neutrality ends up incentivizing Israeli noncooperation: if granting human rights organizations entry into Gaza will enable them to document Israeli crimes, isn’t it prudent state policy to bar these organizations altogether and settle for an agnostic verdict from them? Finally, one aspect of Amnesty’s posture of balance deserves special notice. It cites in abundance the junk claims of Israeli hasbara, but not once does it report the pertinent findings of Gaza’s respected human rights organizations, such as the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The methodology section of Unlawful and Deadly states: “Amnesty International studied relevant documentation produced by UN Agencies, the Israeli military and Israeli governmental bodies, Israeli and Palestinian NGOs, Palestinian armed groups, and media reports, amongst other sources, and consulted with relevant experts and practitioners before writing the report. Amnesty International would like to thank the Israeli NGOs and other Israeli bodies that provided assistance to its researchers.” Whereas the report amply represents the claims of Israeli military and governmental bodies, one searches in vain for a single reference to Palestinian NGOs.
Amnesty’s biased use of evidence in Unlawful and Deadly subtly shifts to Hamas a portion of culpability for Israel’s most egregious crimes during OPE:
Hospitals
Seventeen hospitals and 56 primary healthcare centers were either destroyed or damaged during OPE. Unlawful and Deadly points to Hamas’s alleged misuse of three of these facilities.
(a) Al-Wafa. Israel repeatedly attacked and then reduced to rubble al-Wafa hospital, the sole rehabilitation facility in Gaza. This wasn’t the first time Israel targeted the hospital. During Cast Lead, al-Wafa sustained direct hits from eight tank shells, two missiles and thousands of bullets, even as Israel, in blatant contradiction, declared that it did not target “terrorists” launching attacks “in the vicinity of a hospital.” This time around, Amnesty cites the Israeli allegation that al-Wafa was a “command center.” It could have noted that “command centers” was Israel’s default alibi for targeting civilian objects during OPE, and that in other contexts Amnesty itself treated this pretext as baseless. Displaying an aerial photograph, Israel alleged that Hamas fired a rocket from al-Wafa’s immediate vicinity. Amnesty found, however, that “The image tweeted by the Israeli military does not match satellite images of the al-Wafa hospital and appears to depict a different location.” This finding would seem to dispose of Israel’s alibi, except that, ever-so-evenhanded, Amnesty concludes that it “has not been able to verify Israeli assertions that the hospital was used to launch rockets” and the Israeli claim should be “independently investigated.” In other words, even if the only evidence on which Israel based its claim was demonstrably false, it still remains an open question whether or not the claim is true. As it happens, Israel itself eventually dropped the rocket allegation. Amnesty further notes that “according to media reports” an “anti-tank missile was fired from al-Wafa.” The “media reports” cited by Amnesty turn out to be little more than an official Israeli press handout dutifully reprinted by the Jerusalem Post. It is equally instructive what Amnesty elects not to cite. If it adduces Israeli hasbara as credible evidence, shouldn’t it also have cited al-Wafa’s director, who told Haaretz that Israeli claims were “false and misleading,” or the representative of the World Health Organization in Gaza, who acknowledged the probable presence of a “rocket launching site in the vicinity” of al-Wafa, but contended that “it was more than 200 meters away from the hospital”? “Israeli forces contest having directly and intentionally targeted [al-Wafa] hospital, claiming that they sought to neutralize rocket fire originating in the vicinity of the hospital,” an International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) delegation observed after entering Gaza and sifting through the evidence. “However, various elements indicate that the hospital was in fact the target of a direct and intentional attack on the part of Israeli armed forces.” But, quelling doubts that might linger of Israel’s innocence, Amnesty reports, “An internal investigation by the Israeli military into its attacks on al-Wafa…found that the attacks had been carried out in accordance with international law.” Shouldn’t it also have mentioned that all major human rights organizations, Amnesty included, have dismissed the results of Israeli internal investigations as worthless?
(b) Al-Shifa. On the basis of “credible” evidence that Hamas fired a rocket from behind al-Shifa hospital, Amnesty called for an independent investigation. It then proceeded to call for an investigation of “other reports and claims that Hamas leaders and security forces used facilities within the hospital for military purposes and interrogations during the hostilities.” Israel leveled allegations similar to these during Cast Lead, but the evidence it adduced in support of them was razor thin. This time around, Amnesty cites many sources of varying quality. What it emphatically does not do, however, is cite sources that dispute the allegation. It ignored the compelling and nuanced testimony of two respected foreign surgeons who volunteered in al-Shifa during OPE: while “able to roam freely at the hospital,” they observed no indication that it was a “command center for Hamas.” At this writer’s request, one of the world’s leading academic specialists on Gaza, Sara Roy of Harvard University, consulted a clutch of her own Gaza-based sources, whose personal and professional integrity she attested to. The consensus among them is that, although rockets had been fired in the vicinity of al-Shifa (but not from hospital grounds), it was highly improbable that Hamas made military use of the hospital building. How did it come to pass that Amnesty found no place for such contrary opinions by impeccable sources? Amnesty also reports the supposedly incriminating tidbit that “a Palestinian journalist…was interrogated by officers from Hamas’ Internal Security in an abandoned section of the hospital.” During OPE, al-Shifa was filled to the brim with as many as 13,000 homeless people. Because it enabled access to satellite news gathering (SNG) equipment, the hospital also served as a hub for the media, political spokespeople, UN officials, human rights organizations and other NGOs. One can’t help but wonder why, amidst a murderous foreign invasion, it should be deemed intrinsically sinister, indeed, warranting a human rights investigation, if the besieged party questions—not physically abuses or intimidates; just questions—someone in a facility packed with a vast throng of people, some among them presumably spies, saboteurs and provocateurs who hoped, prayed, and actively endeavored for Hamas’s defeat. Is Hamas not even allowed to carry out ordinary security functions? In its report, “Strangling Necks”: Abductions, torture and summary killings of Palestinians by Hamas forces during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict, Amnesty flatly states, “Hamas forces used the abandoned areas of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, including the outpatients’ clinic area, to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects.” The evidence Amnesty adduces for the most sensational of these asseverations—i.e., Hamas systematically tortured suspects at al-Shifa—underwhelms. It also perplexes how this torture chamber had escaped the notice of swarms of journalists, UN officials and NGOs ensconced at al-Shifa until Amnesty’s solitary fieldworker in Gaza came along to scoop all of them. Indeed, even 2014 Gaza Conflict, which is replete with the most egregious propaganda and lies, doesn’t go beyond alleging that Hamas used al-Shifa for “security service interrogations.” One cannot help but recall Amnesty’s peddling of Kuwait’s sensational “baby incubator” propaganda during the buildup to the First Gulf War in 1991. But wherever the truth lies, it is in any event not germane to the question at hand, unless Amnesty wants to assert that Israel targeted Gazan hospitals as a humanitarian gesture to protect alleged collaborators.
(c) Shuhada al-Aqsa. Israel shelled Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital, killing at least four people and wounding dozens. Noting that Israel alleged it had targeted a cache of antitank missiles stored “in the immediate vicinity of the hospital,” Amnesty states that it “has not been able to confirm this” incident and calls for it to be “independently investigated.” Insofar as it obligingly reported Israel’s pretext for this atrocity, shouldn’t Amnesty also have cited credible eyewitness testimony from a nurse at her station, according to which, after four Palestinians were killed in vehicles parked outside, “the hospital was then hit 15 times in quick succession by tank strikes”? Whereas in Amnesty’s assessment, both Hamas and Israel might equally be culpable of violating international law, the Medical Fact-Finding Mission concludes, “what is important here is that [al-Aqsa] was attacked by the Israeli military while patients were admitted, health professionals were at work and civilians were seeking refuge from attacks in the surrounding area.”
(d) Ambulances. During OPE, 45 ambulances were also either damaged or destroyed as a consequence of direct Israeli attacks or as collateral damage. Amnesty reports that Israel “released video footage which it claimed showed Palestinian fighters entering an ambulance.” This 24-second video clip is the one and only piece of evidence Israel adduced to justify its targeting of ambulances during OPE. In fact, the video possesses zero evidentiary value. It shows a pair of unarmed Hamas militants on an unknown date at an unknown place entering an ambulance belonging to the emergency medical unit of Hamas’s armed wing (Al-Qassam Brigades). For all anyone can tell from the clip, they were en route on a routine medical rescue operation. Shouldn’t Amnesty have also noted that in prior operations Israel has methodically targeted Palestinian ambulances; that, notwithstanding its high-tech surveillance technology, in only one single incident did Israel ever endeavor to adduce evidence justifying such a criminal attack; and that, in this sole instance, Amnesty itself found the evidence dubious? Indeed, Amnesty, the Medical Fact-Finding Mission, and the FIDH delegation extensively documented shocking premeditated and unprovoked attacks by Israel on Palestinian ambulances during OPE.
Schools
Israel destroyed 22 schools and damaged 118 others during OPE. Amnesty reports, “The Israeli military has stated that rockets or mortars were launched from within several schools in the Gaza Strip during the hostilities,” and that “at least 89 rockets and mortar shells were launched within 30m of UN schools.” After professing its inability “to verify any of these specific claims,” Amnesty recommends “they should be independently investigated.” But why does Unlawful and Deadly cite only—and ad nauseam—Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) press hand-outs? Surely it could have cross-checked the official Israeli claims by consulting Palestinian human rights groups, UN officials and relevant NGOs based in Gaza. The UN Board of Inquiry investigated seven Israeli attacks, many deadly, on UN schools, all but one of which had been converted into an emergency shelter. A summary of its conclusions was released after Amnesty issued Unlawful and Deadly. The Board adduced no evidence to sustain, but copious evidence, including security guard and other witness testimony, to refute, stock Israeli allegations that Hamas launched rockets from within or in the vicinity of the specific UN schools it attacked. It further merits notice that, basing itself on UN press releases, Amnesty recounts widely publicized allegations indicting Hamas’s misuse of other UN schools not targeted by Israel: “Palestinian armed groups stored rockets and other munitions in…UN schools. UNRWA discovered Palestinian munitions in three of its vacant schools in the Gaza Strip,” specifically, “20 rockets in an elementary school in Gaza City,” “rockets…in an elementary school in Jabalia,” “another cache of rockets…at a school in Nuseirat.” The Board of Inquiry found, however, that the weapons stored in these empty schools (they were closed for summer recess) were not rocket caches but, rather, one mortar and 20 shells in the Gaza City elementary school, “an object, seemingly a weapon” in the Jabalia school, and one mortar and three shells on one occasion and one mortar and 20 shells on a second occasion at the Nuseirat school.
Mosques
Israel destroyed 73 mosques and damaged 130 others during OPE. Amnesty reports that, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “at least 83 rockets and mortars were launched from within 25m of mosques during the hostilities, in some cases from directly within the mosque compounds.” No other source is cited by Amnesty. This was not the first time Israel targeted mosques in Gaza. During Operation Cast Lead, it destroyed 30 mosques and damaged 15 more. The UN Human Rights Council mission headed by Richard Goldstone investigated an “intentional” Israeli missile attack during Cast Lead on a mosque that killed at least 15 people attending services. It found “no evidence that this mosque was used for the storage of weapons or any military activity by Palestinian armed groups.” In general, the case Israel has mounted to justify its targeting of Gaza’s mosques lacks coherence. It alleges that Hamas has used mosques to stash weapons but—as the Goldstone Mission’s military expert observed—with “abundant hideaways in the labyrinthine alleyways of Gaza,” Hamas would have been foolhardy to “store anything in an open building like a mosque, which had been pre-targeted and pre-registered by Israeli intelligence.” Israel has also alleged that Hamas placed weapons in mosques because, on the basis of prior experience, it “assumed that the IDF would not attack them.” But in fact, even before Cast Lead, Israel had damaged or destroyed 55 mosques in Gaza between 2001 and 2008. The final report of a fact-finding committee headed by eminent South African jurist John Dugard concluded that during Cast Lead “mosques, and more particularly the minarets, had been deliberately targeted on the grounds that they symbolized Islam,” while testimony by IDF soldiers who served in Gaza during Cast Lead confirmed the indiscriminate targeting of mosques. If it is going to quote official Israeli pretexts for the wholesale—indeed, Kristallnacht-like—assault on Islamic houses of worship, shouldn’t Amnesty also have noted that in the past they proved to be spurious?
Power Plant
Israel repeatedly attacked Gaza’s only power plant during OPE. The attacks exacerbated already severe electricity blackouts and devastated water, sanitation and medical services. This was not the first time Israel had attacked Gaza’s only power plant. In 2006, it launched multiple missile strikes precisely targeting the plant’s transformers. B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) deemed the 2006 attack a “war crime.” Amnesty states that the attack on Gaza’s power plant during OPE “could amount to a war crime,” but then hastens to enter this qualification: “An Israeli brigadier-general denied that Israel had targeted the power plant intentionally, but did not rule out the possibility that it was hit by mistake.” If Amnesty quoted the brigadier-general’s predictable denial, couldn’t it also have taken note that in the past Israel did intentionally target the very same power plant? “The power plant’s location was well known,” the FIDH delegation meanwhile concluded after visiting Gaza. “Repeated strikes…and the refusal [by Israel] to guarantee the security of the plant do not support the assertion that these strikes were accidental.”
Amnesty’s biased evidentiary approach is also manifest in Families under the Rubble, which examines targeted Israeli attacks on inhabited civilian homes. It does find that the eight attacks on which it focused were on various grounds unlawful and possibly war crimes. However, although it asserts that “the onus is on Israel to provide information concerning the attacks and their intended targets,” and although Israel itself “made no statement about who or what was being targeted, or even acknowledged that it carried out these particular attacks, ” Amnesty bizarrely takes upon itself the task of ferreting out legitimate Israeli pretexts for each murderous assault. It repeatedly speculates, often on the flimsiest of grounds, that Israel targeted this or that civilian dwelling because a Hamas militant might have been hiding inside (see Table 3).
Table 3: Amnesty International: Why Israel Targeted Civilian Homes in Gaza
| Case #1 (18 Palestinian civilians killed, 7 from one family, 11 from another) | One of the neighbors said that he had heard from others that a group of unknown people were walking around in the corridor somewhere downstairs on the night of the attack. Some neighbors speculated, without seeing them, that they might have been members of an armed group…. It is unclear what the intended target of this attack was. Even if a group of men had entered the building and were assumed or known to have been members of an armed group by the military, its actions of targeting two family apartments was reckless and disproportionate. |
| Case #2 (26 Palestinian civilians killed, 25 from one family) | The apparent target of Israel’s attacks was Ahmed Sahmoud, a member of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing. According to Israeli sources he was a high-ranking officer in the Khan Yunis command. Early reports of the attack said that he was inside the building visiting a member of the Abu Jame’ family. Surviving family members and neighbors denied this…. [N]eighbors believed that Ahmed Sahmoud might have been under the balcony of his mother’s apartment on the ground floor when the house was attacked…. If Ahmed Sahmoud was the intended target this would constitute a grossly disproportionate attack. |
| Case #3 (36 Palestinians killed, 16 from one family, 7 from a second family, 7 from a third family, 4 from a fourth family) | By questioning many of the family members and their neighbors an Amnesty International fieldworker found three residents who might have been the object of an attack. [Four long paragraphs follow filled with inconclusive speculations on them.] Even if all the three men who might have been targets had been directly participating in hostilities, their presence in the house would not have deprived the other residents of their immunity, as civilians, from direct attack…. The effects of an attack…should have been…regarded as manifestly disproportionate. |
| Case #4 (14 Palestinian civilians killed, 5 from one family, 4 from a second family) | [T]wo neighbors maintained that, following the attack, they found out that at least four members of the al-Qassem Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, including a battalion commander and a communications officer, were apparently using the empty apartment in the building for some time prior to the attack…. Amnesty International has been unable to verify this information. However, even if the empty flat in the…building was used by the al-Qassam Brigades, the loss of civilian life in this attack was clearly disproportionate. |
| Case #5 (5 Palestinian civilians killed, all from one family) | Neighbors told Amnesty International’s fieldworker that they believed that the attack was intended to target the home of the man who went by the name of “Abu Amra,” who was not in his apartment at the time…. Amnesty International has been unable to confirm the identity of “Abu Amra” nor [sic] whether or not he did have any relationship with any armed group. Even if “Abu Amra” was a fighter or otherwise had been directly participating in hostilities, this attack was carried out in a manner that violated international humanitarian law. |
| Case #6 (6 Palestinian civilians killed, 5 from one family) | Although family members denied it, both Ramadan Kamal al-Bakri and Ibrahim al-Mashharawi [two of the deceased] were members of Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades…. [If these two men] were the intended targets,...the Israeli forces should have taken necessary precautions to minimize the risk to civilians in the house. |
| Case #7 (8 Palestinian civilians killed, all from one family) | All witnesses who gave statements said that none of the family members was involved with armed groups…. [The brother of the deceased head of household] said: “Earlier Ra’fat had gone out with a torch to investigate a rocket that he thought had gone up from the olive fields east of our house.… They probably thought that Ra’fat had shot the rocket from the field and thought he was from the resistance.”… Even if they believed that a fighter was present, Israeli forces should have realized that bombing the house would be a disproportionate attack. |
| Case #8 (8 Palestinian civilians killed, all from one family) | The intended target of the attack appears to have been Hayel Abu Dahrouj, a member of Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades, who had returned to his house shortly before the attack. “He missed his kids so he came back to the house,” his brother Wael told Amnesty International’s fieldworker.… If Hayel Abu Dahrouj was the intended target, it is unclear why Israeli forces did not take necessary precautions to minimize the risk to civilians in the homes. |
Setting aside that, in most of these instances, it’s unclear how Israel would even have known of the militant’s presence before attacking (most neighbors seemed to be in the dark); and setting aside that, by supplying Israel with alibis for among the most heinous atrocities it committed during OPE, Amnesty conveniently relieved the burdens of Israeli hasbara; and setting aside that even Israel’s harshest critic would concede an occasional operational error, making Amnesty’s detection in every instance of the Hamas militant targeted by Israel yet more embarrassingly apologetic—setting all this aside, wittingly or unwittingly the net effect of Amnesty’s report is to convey the distinct impression that Israel was overwhelmingly targeting Hamas militants in its attacks on civilian homes. In fact, in a sober calculation of its pedagogical value, but also in a state of inflamed madness, Israel inflicted a grotesque form of collective punishment, as it indiscriminately or intentionally leveled a staggering number of Gazan homes, initially targeting the hearths of Hamas militants, then, as the ground invasion got underway, embarking on an unconstrained wrecking spree, and then, in OPE’s denouement, pulverizing four multistory landmark edifices in Gaza. In its report, “Nothing Is Immune”: Israel’s destruction of landmark buildings in Gaza, Amnesty, although acknowledging that it was “a form of collective punishment,” brackets off Israel’s climactic act as the exception to the rule: “[T]he attacks are of great significance because they are examples of what appears to have been deliberate destruction and targeting of civilian buildings and property on a large scale, carried out without military necessity.” But the vast preponderance of Israeli destruction throughout OPE consisted of collective punishment on a lunatic scale and devoid of military purpose let alone necessity. Israel’s targeting of Hamas militants occupying or deploying from these homes amounted at most to the equivalent of statistical error. Can Amnesty possibly believe that a Hamas militant was secreted in all, or even most, of the eighteen thousand homes Israel destroyed in Gaza? The ghastly truth of what unfolded in Gaza is captured, not in Amnesty’s effective whitewash but, instead, in the Breaking the Silence collection of testimonies of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who served in Gaza during OPE (see Table 4).
Table 4: Property/Home Destruction in Gaza during OPE: A Selection of IDF Testimonies
| 1 | [Did you see any “before and after” aerial photos?] Sure. Neighborhoods erased. You know what joke was being told in the army at the time? The joke says that Palestinians only sing the chorus because they have no verses [houses] left. [in Hebrew, the word for verses is the same as the word for house] |
| 5 | During the talk [while in training] he [high ranking armored battalion commander] showed us the urban combat facility and said, “Everything you see here—picture it as though someone came through now and destroyed everything. There are almost no buildings left standing.” The inclination is to avoid risks—rather to destroy everything we come across. |
| 14 | I got the impression that every house we passed on our way got hit by a shell—and houses farther away too. It was methodical. There was no threat. |
| 15 | While we were stationed there, the armored forces would fire at the surrounding houses all the time. I don’t know what exactly their order was, but it seemed like every house was considered a threat, and so every house needed to be hit by at least one shell…. [After you left, were there still any houses left standing?] Nearly none. |
| 20 | [What were you shooting at?] At houses. [Randomly chosen houses?] Yes. [How much fire were you using?] There was constant talk about how much we fired, how much we hit, who missed. There were people who fired 20 shells per day. It’s simple: Whoever feels like shooting more—shoots more. Most guys shot more. Dozens of shells [per day], throughout the operation. Multiply that by 11 tanks in the company. |
| 21 | I don’t know how they pulled it off, the D9*** operators didn’t rest for a second. Nonstop, as if they were playing in a sandbox. Driving back and forth, back and forth, razing another house, another street. And at some point there was no trace left of that street…. Day and night, 24/7, they went back and forth, gathering up mounds, making embankments, flattening house after house. |
| 28 | There was no threat and it was quiet, and then suddenly there’s this command on the two-way radio: “Guys, everyone form a row, facing the neighborhood of al-Bureij”…. I remember it, all the tanks were standing in a row, and I personally asked my commander: “Where are we firing at?” He told me: “Pick wherever you feel like it.” And later, during talks with the other guys—each one basically chose his own target, and the commander called it on the two-way radio, “Good morning al-Bureij.” “We are carrying out, a ‘Good morning al-Bureij,’ guys” that was the quote…. And everyone fired shells wherever they wanted to, obviously. Nobody had opened fire at us—not before, not after, not during. |
| 30 | Everything “wet” [using live fire]. From the moment we went in, we were firing MATADOR and LAW [portable anti-tank] rockets on every house we entered before “opening” them up, everything “wet,” grenades, the whole thing. War. [Every room you go into you open “wet”?] Everything. When I got to a house, it was already half destroyed. Lots and lots of bullet holes inside it, everything inside a total mess. [The two hours of artillery fire before—what were they shooting at?] At scattered areas near the houses. All those agricultural areas near the houses. Before a tank makes any movement it fires, every time. Those guys were trigger happy, totally crazy. Those were their orders, I’m certain of it, there’s no chance anybody would just go around shooting like that. [The brigade’s] conception was, “We’ll fire without worrying about it, and then we’ll see what happens.” [The fire was directed at places deemed suspicious?] No, not necessarily. The tank fires at places that you know you will need to enter, it fires at those houses. [Only at the houses you’re going to enter?] No, at the surrounding houses too. There are also agricultural fields there, the D9 rips them all up. And tin sheds. It takes down whatever’s in its way, it topples greenhouses. Lots of houses were flattened in “Bar’s Bar” [the nickname given to a housing compound in which the forces were positioned]. Empty houses that bothered us. Bothered us even just to look at. |
| 33 | The very day we left Gaza, all the houses we had stayed in were blown up by combat engineers. |
| 34 | We [armored corps] were given a number of targets…. It’s not like any normal city, where you’ll see a building next to another building and there’s a space between them. It looks like one fused layer. [And at that point were you being fired at?] No fire was directed toward us, but these were deemed “suspicious spots”—which means a very lax policy of opening fire [was being employed]. That can mean anything that looks threatening to us…. Every tank commander knew, and even the simple soldiers knew, that if something turns out to be not OK, they can say they saw something suspicious. |
| 37 | One of the high ranking commanders, he really liked the D9s. He was a real proponent of flattening things. He put them to good use. Let’s just say that after every time he was somewhere, all the infrastructure around the buildings was totally destroyed, almost every house had gotten a shell through it. He was very much in favor of that. |
| 42 | The forces…destroyed everything still left there. Literally not a single house was left standing.… “We are entering the area in order to destroy the entire tunneling infrastructure that still remains there.” If you think about it, that really means every house in the area. [You said that according to the intelligence the IDF had, no tunnels were left there.] Right. What they mean is, this is the area in which the brigade moves around, if it’s still standing, it needs to be taken down…. This incursion happened the night before there was a ceasefire.… [T]hey went in just to destroy stuff. Just to purposelessly destroy stuff, to finish the job, until they were told to stop. |
| 46 | There was one afternoon that the company commander gathered us all together, and we were told that we were about to go on an offensive operation, to “provoke” the neighborhood that dominated us, which was al-Bureij…. Because up until then, we hadn’t really had any real engagement with them…. [W]hen it started getting dark my tank led the way, we were in a sort of convoy, and there was this little house. And then suddenly we see an entire neighborhood opening up before us, lots of houses, it’s all crowded and the moment we got to that little house, the order came to attack. Each [tank] aimed at whichever direction it chose.... And that’s how it was, really—every tank just firing wherever it wanted to. And during the offensive, no one shot at us—not before it, not during it, and not after it. I remember that when we started withdrawing with the tanks, I looked toward the neighborhood, and I could simply see an entire neighborhood up in flames, like in the movies. Columns of smoke everywhere, the neighborhood in pieces, houses on the ground, and like, people were living there, but nobody had fired at us yet. We were firing purposelessly. |
| 51 | A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip and we were all firing a lot when there wasn’t any need for it—just for the sake of firing—a member of our company was killed.… The company commander came over to us and told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, and he said, “Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, and we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade.”… [T]here was a sort of building far away near the coastline, around 4.5 kilometers from us…. It wasn’t a threat to us, it had nothing to do with anybody, it wasn’t part of the operation, it was out by the sea, far away from anything and from any potential threat—but that building was painted orange, and that orange drove my eyes crazy the entire time.… So I told my platoon commander: “I want to fire at that orange house,” and he told me: “Cool, whatever you feel like,” and we fired…. [Did your guys discuss it later?] The bit about shelling purposelessly? No, because when you look at the bigger picture, that’s something we were doing all the time. We were firing purposelessly all day long. Hamas was nowhere to be seen. |
| 52 | [Is the tank’s M16 being used the whole time?] The more the merrier. What weapons? The tank, endless ammunition, and a crazy amount of firepower. Constantly. If not via the cannon, then via the tank’s heavy machine gun. [Where is it shooting at?] At everything, basically. At suspicious houses. What’s a “suspicious spot?” Everything is a suspicious spot. This is Gaza, you’re firing at everything. |
| 54 | Any house that infantry guys enter—a tank precedes them. That was really the formulation: any force that enters a house—first, at least one tank shell is fired at it before the force even goes in. Immediately after the engagement we set up in this orchard, we blasted shells at the surrounding houses. Even my commander, because he was hyped up to fire his personal weapon, took the entire team out just to shoot at the house, which was already obviously empty. So many shells were fired at it, and it was clearly empty. “Well, fire,” he told us. It was meaningless. It was just for kicks—the sort of fun you have at a shooting range. |
| 63 | [The commander] tells you, “Listen, this is the first line—I can’t take any risks on the first line of houses, use artillery on those.” [Did he have any intelligence on those houses?] No, no, he has no intelligence. |
| 67 | [Combat engineering forces] blew up a lot of houses…. There are all kinds of considerations about why to blow up a house. One of them, for example, is when you want to defend some other house. If there’s a house blocking your field of vision, [and you want to] expose the area so that it’s easier to defend…. Sometimes we blew up a house when we suspected there was an explosive device in it, but I think ultimately we blew up pretty much the entire neighborhood. |
| 71 | On the day the fellow from our company was killed, the commanders came up to us and told us what happened. Then they decided to fire an “honor barrage” and fire three shells.… [A barrage of what?] A barrage of shells. They fired the way it’s done in funerals, but with shellfire and at houses. Not into the air. They just chose [a house]—the tank commander said, “Just pick the farthest one, so it does the most damage.” Revenge of sorts. So we fired at one of the houses. |
| 74 | I remember one time that explosives were detonated in order to clear passage routes. They told us, “Take cover, it’s about to be used 100-150 meters away.” Then an explosion—I’ve never heard anything like it. Lamps crashing, it was insane—a crazy mushroom of fire, really crazy. Then we went down into the street and the houses we were supposed to take over no longer existed. Gone. |
| 83 | There was a humanitarian ceasefire that went into effect at 6:00 AM. I remember they told us at 5:15 AM, “Look, we’re going to put on a show.”… It was amazing. Fire, nonstop shelling of the “Sevivon” neighborhood [east of Beit Hanoun]…. Nonstop. Just nonstop. The entire Beit Hanoun compound—in ruins…. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing. |
| 110 | [A] very senior officer from the army strike coordination center comes in running and says, “Listen up, the brigade commander was killed and a soldier was kidnapped, it’s a mess, we need to help them.”… One of the most senior officials in the IDF, he just marked off houses on an aerial photo of Shuja’iyya, to be taken down. He simply looked at the map and saw commanding points and commanding houses and [picked targets] in a way that was in some sense sort of random—so that there would be no way that if you’re a Hamas militant…there wasn’t some house that just got taken down near you right now. It’s not like in every building that was struck in Shuja’iyya there was some Hamas militant or somebody firing at our forces. [So why was it attacked?] In order to keep their heads down and allow our forces to get out of there, to use firepower—that’s how the military works. [I’m trying to understand: it was random, or as part of a target list prepared in advance?] It wasn’t prepared in advance at all. In the inquiry later on it was described as a mistake.
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In its introduction to Families under the Rubble, Amnesty exhorts Israel to “learn the lessons of this and previous conflicts and change its military doctrine and tactics for fighting in densely populated areas such as Gaza so as to ensure strict compliance with international humanitarian law.” But Israel has already learnt the lessons of fighting in Gaza, its military doctrine has incorporated these lessons, and the IDF brilliantly executed them. It requires exceptional mental discipline not to notice that ensuring “strict compliance with international law” has not been an Israeli concern, let alone a priority. Indeed, the whole point of OPE was to leave “families under the rubble.”
[Leading forensic scholar Norman G. Finkelstein has conducted a detailed examination of Amnesty International’s reporting on Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge against the Gaza Strip. His lengthy essay is currently being serialized on Byline, the crowd-funded journalism website where he is a contributing author, and will be re-posted on Jadaliyya in three installments. Finkelstein hopes readers of his essay will help him raise USD 100,000 for Al-Awda Hospital in the Gaza Strip, and donations can be made by accessing his posts on the Byline website. His essay is being reproduced here without the extensive footnotes; these can be consulted at the original site of publication]